One thing which had always puzzled Sean was how Phil had become a UK resident. He came and went as he pleased, travelling in and out of the country without any apparent difficulty. There were many wealthy Arabs living in London, especially in the expensive Marble Arch-Edgware Road area. They did not appear to work and they also seemed to come and go as they pleased.
It was just after one of his customary visits to the castle to make a personal check on the family’s investment, that Phil, in a fluster, had called the hotel from the Edinburgh airport. He had mislaid his ticket and travel documents. It took five minutes for Sean to locate a leather wallet that contained the ticket and a passport in a drawer in the private room which was reserved exclusively for Phil’s visits.
At first he thought there was some kind of a mistake when he flipped open the passport, but when he saw the photo and the name there was no doubt, to his astonishment Phil held an Irish passport.
Embarrassed that his secret had been discovered he later explained to Sean how he had acquired the passport. He told him how he had deposited a large sum of money in Dublin bank and made a hefty contribution to the order of the Society of Jesus, otherwise known as the Jesuits.
He was then accorded the help of a somewhat eccentric Dublin lawyer, acting on behalf of the Holy Church, which had designated him to help a fellow Christian, a member of a besieged community, the Copts of Egypt, struggling to defend the name of Christ and persecuted by heathens.
Phil explained that the passport was essential for travelling around Europe, an Egyptian passport holder would have been tied down by endless visas applications and administrative delays, a permanent hindrance to his business. As a citizen of one of the countries of the European Union the problem simply disappeared.
The idea of an Irish passport appealed to Sean, it would be an excellent insurance policy and he applied to the Dublin passport office. However, he took the precaution of using his assumed identity, that of his Irish cousin, John Ryan. After obtaining his cousin’s birth certificate at the registrar of births and deaths in Dublin with surprisingly few formalities he quickly obtained his new passport.
The UK was excluded for setting up his project. Ireland looked an attractive alternative. His parents had been Irish and the Emerald Isle was just across the water, a little provincial, but definitely not foreign. Dublin was less than an hour’s flight from London and he set off with the promise of Phil’s help and the necessary seed capital, it was if, Phil had laughed, ‘the streets of Dublin were lined with gold’.
He was not at all familiar with Dublin. His last visit had been a short rainy holiday some twenty-five year before. On arriving in Ireland that autumn his main problem was to find a suitable accommodation and after a long difficult search he finally found a house for what seemed a ruinously high price in a Dublin suburb, things had definitely changed with Ireland catching up on UK prices at what seemed to be a huge rate of inflation. He then set out to renew family links with his cousins scattered around the country.
Nearby to Limerick City he made acquaintance with relatives on his mothers side, they were however small though prosperous shops keepers and hard up school teachers. They were definitely not connected into the business world. By chance the wife of one of his cousins had a relative in Limerick City, who was a well know local businessman. A certain Pat Kennedy.
Kavanagh was welcomed with arms wide open by Kennedy, to whom he was another one of the overseas Irish coming home to invest. The tide of immigration had definitely turned thought Kennedy, ever hopeful of a return to a mythical golden age.
Kennedy was impressed by Kavanagh’s background as it was recounted and his stories of Egyptian investors and the London property market.
“What do you have in mind then Sean?”
“I’m thinking about international financial services. I believe that the Irish government is encouraging that kind of business start-up.”
“You’re sure right they are Sean. They’re also offering start-up assistance, you know grants and all that kind of thing, if you set up in one of their special area.”
“What I’m thinking about is IT related financial and investment services. My partner Jim Carmichael is specialised in IT and myself in the financial consultancy area.”
“Can you be a little more precise, what exactly would you be selling?”
“It’s quite simply, companies and banks have specialised online services, that is inter-branch and inter-bank networks for transmitting data. With the development of Internet technology they will be communicating in a much more sophisticated manner, both nationally and international, with anyone who is connected to the Internet. The projections are that this technology will be used for all kinds of banking operations, between banks and also by the general public.”
“But what will you supply?”
“We shall develop all the software applications with the banks as our customers.”
“I see,” said Kennedy, even though it was obvious to Kavanagh that he had lost him.
“In addition we shall build up data base services that we would be housed on our computers that Internet users can access.”
“Like what?”
“Imagine from your desk top PC you can get all the flight time tables from Aer Lingus with hotels and things like that!”
Kennedy got the picture; Aer Lingus and flight timetables were just up his street, remembering his next trip to Amsterdam planned for the following weekend.
“Okay, I get you now. What kind of an investment are you thinking about?”
“Well it’s not that significant in capitalisation. You know it’s more of a people thing than manufacturing electronics for example.”
“I see. Do you have a figure in mind?”
“Well, I think it’ll require about a million over the next couple of years. Setting up an office, hardware and working capital.”
“Let’s see, we can get half of that from the NIB, which means half a million is needed! Do you have that?”
“No.”
“Well Sean what kind of funds do you have?
“Between a hundred and fifty and two hundred and fifty,” said Sean, knowing that Phil would be good for fifty and Jim likewise, providing that the NIB came up with what Pat had said they would.
“Okay, we can get the rest from the bank if the project is good,” said Pat laughing with glee and rubbing his hands together enthusiastically.
Sean believed him, Pat was very persuasive, he had the proverbial Blarney and laced together with his legal and financial jargon he could convince almost anybody to part with their money, not to speak of the local civil servants, who were almost desperate to find credible investors with suitable projects to promote with the help of the Irish tax payer’s money, so as to justify their own existence.
What was more Pat believed Sean, he believed himself, and in fact he believed almost any stranger that got off the plane in Shannon with what seemed to him like a good business idea.
Chapter 16
Kavanagh